Banda — maximum transparency

The Banda agency was founded in 2011 by Pavlo Vrzeszcz, Iegor Petrov and Iaroslav Serdiuk. All three were from the Ukrainian office of the advertising agency Leo Burnett. Now Banda is probably the most titled agency in Ukraine. In early June, the agency received the Effie International Award as the best independent creative agency in the world. Last year, three Epica Awards, six Red Dot Awards, a year earlier six more Red Dot Awards, in 2017 — the Bronze Cannes Lion for the design of "Eurovision" and others.

Banda worked on advertising campaigns for large business structures: OLX, Goodwine, Comfy, PariMatch. It is also known that the agency promotes large state projects, such as Ukraine Now and Eurovision, which took place in Kyiv. Banda was also involved in the rebranding of NAMU and a campaign in support of the exhibition "I + GOD = A" by Lviv artist Myroslav Yagoda, which gathered a record audience for the museum.

Now Banda looks like a dream agency: a train of awards, prestigious clients, a huge design office with a swimming pool, bar, and terrace. But this was not always the case. In his report on iForum 2019, Pavlo Vrzeszcz said that at first the founders did not really understand how to manage the agency and used the tactics of "growing mushrooms." "For mushrooms to grow well, they need to be covered from everything and kept in the dark," said Vrzeszczyk, explaining the fact that at first, the management kept silent about any failures and did not talk about the state of affairs in the team.

Subsequently, Banda has developed its methodology of work based on the basic principle of maximum transparency. The agency opened all the data and figures for its employees: from the cost of contracts to the number of salaries of each. "We were afraid that people would calculate the average salary in the agency and think that they would not be paid extra. But in the end, it all ended well. Employees see their contribution. They understood how the speed of closing a single project affects the profitability of the entire agency. Now everyone knows that 2-4 open projects a year reduce profits by 30%. It's difficult to understand without numbers," says Vrzeszcz.

In addition, Banda is constantly experimenting, not paying attention to common practices. Last summer, the agency launched a month of crazy hiring and decided to employ 70 people at once. Also, the agency's top managers went on a Banda tour in Ukrainian cities to give several lectures and probe the area for new talents. However, the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus outbreak did not pass Banda. The founders had to contribute about UAH 7 million in personal funds to stabilize the agency, and most employees had to reduce their salaries by 5% - 40%.

ODDEE Agency — agency against the rules

ODDEE Agency was founded by Ivan Bazar and Alina Tsyganok in 2014. In parallel, for more than ten years, they have been organizing concerts and tours of mostly rap artists. In 2018, #ODDEE received their first Effie Awards for the bold Pit Bull Battle project and in 2019 for Pit Bull Fight. But the main strength of this agency is not in the number of awards.

ODDEE is trying to work against the rules affirmed in Ukrainian marketing and is not afraid to talk about it. Most employees had not previously worked in advertising. And this is not a coincidence but a conscious course. "Agencies" invent "content that can look cool and formally very high quality, but in 9 cases out of 10, it does not become close to the audience. Our goal is to be a link between talents and clients, to unite them into one continuous cycle," says founder Ivan Bazar.

Among the clients of the agency are New Products Group (Pit Bull, Revo, Apps, Shake, NonStop), Bayadera Group, TM "Bashchinsky," Snack Production (Flint, Chipsters), and others. #ODDEE has specific team selection criteria: preferred by students and music fans.

Quarantine led to the fact that all the concerts, the agency continues to hold, had to be paused and wait for further instructions from the authorities. But this gave impetus to develop other services. For example, the agency is involved in promoting the artist.gives platform, working on the second season of Pit Bull Fight and planning new projects.

ISD Group — a technological creative

"I met a girl, we lived separately and wanted to see each other more often," joked Victor Shkurba, talking about the reasons for launching the ISD Group. It appeared in 2003. The co-founders were the girl mentioned above, classmate Shkurba and another friend of theirs. They borrowed $ 2,000 from their parents, rented a simple office, dragged home computers there, and in 2011 shot promotional videos in Hollywood.

Last year, the AI ​​Versus project, created with the participation of ISD Group, received a Bronze Lion at the Cannes Lions Festival, a wooden D&AD pencil, and two silver pencils from The One Show 2020.

ISD Group's clients include the following brands: Phillips, Nivea, Morshynska, Merezha, Procter & Gamble. Back in 2008, the ISD Group team decided on a bold promo project for the Discreet brand and gathered about 240,000 unique visitors on the site, which was a remarkable result at the time.

The AI ​​Versus neurolinguistic system is the peak of the agency's technological creativity at the moment. The Voice of Water project for Morshynska can be called no less noticeable. The project combines a non-standard approach to writing music, the participation of top Ukrainian artists, and even an award for the best collaboration.

Fedoriv — a personal brand and Kooperativ

Andriy Fedorov launched his own advertising agency in 2010. Before that, he was a top manager of large companies Adell Saatchi & Saatchi, Bates Ukraine, Video International Ukraine, United Communications Group, and received the "Footprint in Advertising" award in 2007. But launching his own agency was hard to call a rainbow. Andriy came to his startup with a train of debts totaling $ 600,000.

Currently, Fedoriv is one of the most famous independent agencies in Ukraine. Among the clients are ROZETKA, Morshynska, Oschadbank, Ukrnafta, Multiplex, and even the State Border Guard Service. In 2019 they shared the Epica Awards with Banda, and also received the Red Dot Award, the gold of the Ukrainian Effie Awards in 2018.

The agency began to grow rapidly along with the market. In 2012, Fedoriv headed the All-Ukrainian Advertising Coalition and led until 2016. In 2014, the Fedoriv Hub space was launched in the center of Kyiv. The space has become a platform for a variety of events: from intra-industry to TEDx Kyiv. In 2017, Fedoriv launched his own YouTube account and paid marketing courses as a part of the "Superman" project. In parallel with the development of the Fedoriv brand as an agency, Andriy Fedoriv's personal brand has been developing all this time.

An important feature of Andriy Fedoriv's approach is that he strives for cooperation and support of small agencies. In 2018, together with top managers of other agencies, Fedoriv announced the launch of a support system for small agencies and the very precarious position of network market leaders. In 2019, this resulted in the division of business into Fedoriv Agency and Fedoriv Group. The founder promised to divide 49% of his shares among key employees within three years. Fedoriv Agency will continue its initial course and remain a marketing agency, while Fedoriv Group is an investment company that will support new agencies. Their first big project is Kooperativ.

Kooperativ is a large coworking space, which is built on the principle of creating a community. Fedoriv launched it together with Vasily Grogol, the founder of BURSA, and businessman Edward Meyer. Quarantine did not bypass Fedoriv. He found a way to pump his brand and published a paid "Papa Brand" online course.

Brain Tank — C-Suite Agency

Brain Tank marketing communications agency appeared relatively recently, in 2019. But in fact, its history dates back to 2004 through the advertising agency Royal Advertising, which entered a new structure. Founders Yevhenii Myroniuk and Andriy Franchuk are infrequent guests in Ukrainian media publications. However, the portfolio of projects is impressive: Gulliver, Bud Development, Novus, Leroy Merlin, Intersport, and many others.

The main feature of Brain Tank is its non-standard approach to work. It is the only C-Suite agency of its kind in Ukraine. The peculiarity of this approach is the point-by-point solution of very narrow and high-level problems, which can be helped by units of specialists in the world. That is, Brain Tank invites top freelance professionals to solve specific tasks.

One of the agency's experts is Viktor Yushchenko, the former president of Ukraine and head of the National Bank, whom Brain Tank is hiring to solve challenging problems in the banking sector. Another expert is Sonia Soutus, a former Vice President of Coca-Cola in North America and USAID's head of public education.

Now Brain Tank has launched its own Telegram channel, which shares life hacks on marketing and a non-trivial approach to advertising. Quarantine only added to the agency's work. Myroniuk and Franchuk did not see a big problem in the crisis and, on the contrary, began to call existing and potential customers with ideas on how to save them during the disaster. And it worked.